


Eight Ball

by irrelevant



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, Handcuffs, M/M, Son of a D, Where There's Smoke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-26
Updated: 2011-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the one where Smoker's a cop and Ace is hustling pool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Ball

The kid is a hustler. With a grin like that there’s nothing else he could be.

At first Smoker figured him for a high school runaway after some easy cash. The boy looks younger than he is—must be the freckles—but his ID is real enough, and he’s well over legal. The second night he showed up at the Anchor, Smoker got his license number off the barkeep and ran it.

Came up clean as a whistle. Portgas, Ace D. Twenty-two years old, full time ship mechanic, part time university student.

Half-naked pool prodigy.

Unfortunately, Smoker can’t arrest someone for grinning like an idiot and going shirtless in a dive where shoes are optional, so until the kid actually puts a foot wrong, Smoker’s stuck watching as one hopeful fool after another goes down to a killer smile and a talent for running a table no matter how shitty the opening break is.

What Smoker can’t figure out is why Portgas picked the Anchor for his game. It’s a coppers’ bar, and an old school one at that. The younger cops have their own hangouts, and the flash usually stays far away from places like this. Obviously Portgas is either new at hustling or likes living on the edge, because for the last two weeks, every night that Smoker’s been in, the kid’s been at the far pool table. Charming a beer or two off anyone sucker enough to buy, and taking whatever money they don’t spend on alcohol with his cue.

Thanks to Portgas a good chunk of Smoker’s acquaintances have much lighter wallets of late. Funny thing, though, nobody seems to hold it against the kid. If anyone else tried to pull the shit Portgas does, they’d have been hauled around back and beat to within an inch of their miserable life long since.

Not this kid.

Everyone from Smoker’s precinct seems to like Portgas and half the guys who come in here are _vice_ , for god’s sake. Christ, these are the 15th’s finest, and they’re all over in Portgas’ corner, cheering him on as he cleans some poor sap out.

A shout goes up. Smoker assumes Portgas has just made a tough shot. The crowd around the table shifts and Smoker watches Portgas straighten from his bent-over position. The kid chalks his cue, says something to someone standing out of Smoker’s line of sight. Then he looks up and meets Smoker’s eyes.

Portgas' face goes blank behind his smile. He stares unblinking at Smoker, his grin growing until it covers half his face. He waggles his eyebrows in something that looks like a challenge, but about then the gap in the crowd closes, blocking him from Smoker’s view.

Smoker downs the rest of his single malt. He’s had enough of this cat and mouse bullshit. He’s going to smoke Portgas out.

It’s Friday night and he has a weekend to himself, his first in half a year. Unless some moron tries to rob the Anchor (and they’d have to be a moron to go after a cop joint) or the city goes to hell, Smoker can do as he wants. And what he wants is to find out if there’s something more than cocky can’t touch this behind Portgas’ shit-eating grin.

Resigning himself to some lag time, Smoker taps his glass for a refill. If Portgas is running true to form, he'll be here a while yet. And he is. It’s almost two hours before the crowd near the pool tables starts to thin, and by then Smoker is nursing his third whiskey.

The kid is standing with his back to Smoker, racking the balls. Smoker stubs out his cigarette and makes his way across the room, stopping just shy of the table’s hardwood edge. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

Portgas looks up, surprised, but then his gaze settles on Smoker. His mouth twitches. “And a lovely evening to you as well, Captain,” he says. “Wondered how long it’d take to get you over here.”

“Don’t think I’m going to hand you my money like everyone else around here does,” says Smoker.

“Oh, I don’t.” Portgas’ grin widens. “Wasn’t your money I was after taking, anyway.”

Smoker looks Portgas up and down. As with every other time Smoker has seen him, Portgas is wearing baggy black denims, motorcycle boots, and no shirt. A black hat with a red and blue beaded band—looks like some kind of Native American design—dangles from a cord around his neck. He has the kind of body Smoker has always liked; all lean hard muscle, no fat anywhere, and he moves like a cat—fast and without warning.

Fast puts Portgas right in Smoker’s face. Without warning is his hands gripping the pool table to either side of Smoker’s hips. Portgas looks up at Smoker from half-closed eyes; his mouth is sin and his eyes are the devil, and Smoker is starting to get a clue. Reaching down, he wraps a hand around one of Portgas’ wrists and jerks him forward.

Portgas falls into Smoker with a muffled curse; electric lighting falls clear on his features.

Smoker frowns, searching for an elusive memory in a face that seems somehow familiar. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

“Nope.” Portgas rights himself and cocks his head, his grin returning. “But I’ve seen you, and you’ve probably met my dad. Maybe even my kid bro. And last I checked, you work for pops.”

Foreboding is building a damned skyscraper in Smoker’s gut. “For who?”

“I call him Granddad. You probably call him that bastard Monkey. Pretty much everybody does,” Portgas laughs.

Smoker lets go of Portgas’ wrist like it just caught fire, and shoves him away. “You better be shitting me, brat. I’m not in the mood for this.”

“Would I do that, Captain?” says Portgas, laughing at Smoker with his eyes, and Smoker silently curses his luck.

Portgas knows Smoker’s rank; that’s easy enough to find out, but he’d have to know who to ask, which means he knows who Smoker is. Which means the first guy Smoker’s cock has shown interest in for an annoyingly long time is the honorary grandson of Roguetown's Chief of Police. Which means Smoker is shit out of luck.

He'd write this whole scenario off as Portgas trying to get a rise out of him, but there’s that incriminating D. It’s a tradition in the Monkey family. It’s also common knowledge that when the Chief’s son took off for parts unknown, his adopted brother took Dragon's son in, raising him with his own kid. Which would make Portgas Roger's eldest.

It was the name that threw him off, Smoker decides. Aside from Dragon, he doesn't know the Chief's family that well. Although, it doesn't surprise him that Ace isn't carrying around the Gol handle. Rouge Portgas isn't the kind of woman to wear anyone's name but her own, and it looks like she passed that proclivity down to her kid. Smart woman.

“This really freaks you out, doesn’t it?” Portgas’ voice returns Smoker to a present that was looking briefly up, but now promises to become a goat fuck of epic proportions.

“You’ve got a talent for understatement, kid,” Smoker says dryly. Turning his back on Portgas he makes his way towards the exit. Getting laid or drunk isn’t on the books tonight and he has better scotch at home. A shot and a couple hours of reading are sounding better and better.

Smoker pushes the bar’s double doors open and steps out into a humid New England summer night. As he should have expected, Portgas catches him up one street over to the Anchor.

“Slow down, old man,” Portgas pants, almost jogging to keep up with Smoker’s long strides. “Damn, you move fast.”

Smoker gives him a sour look. “No one asked you to come with in the first place.”

“Course you didn’t. You were too freaked.”

Smoker’s laugh is a harsh bark of sound. “Brat. I’m too old for that kind of ego-prodding crap to work. Full points for effort, though. Now go find someone your own age to play with.”

Ace grabs a handful of Smoker’s jacket and hangs on, jerking them both to a full stop. His eyes smoulder, the expression in them a banked blaze. “Don’t want them,” he growls. “I haven’t been spending my nights in that dive for my health.”

“Not my problem, kid,” Smoker shrugs Portgas’ hand off and reaches for his cigarettes. “Why don’t you—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Portgas snarls. Then he pulls the cigarette out of Smoker’s hand and slams their mouths together.

Portgas is living fire under Smoker’s hands and mouth, a brand burnt into him wherever they touch. He kisses like he means it; like he has to make it count or else, and Smoker likes it. Likes, hell, he loves it, wants all of Portgas’s focused determination centered on him, on no one and nowhere else.

And he’s not going to get that. Not in this life, anyway. Not from this flare of molten trouble wrapped up in fiery temptation. Curling a hand around Portgas’ neck, Smoker digs the other into Portgas’ hip. He pushes Portgas backwards, still stopping up his mouth, killing off possible protest.

Portgas’ back hits the wrought-iron fence of the nearest apartment building. Smoker lets go of Portgas’ neck and reaches for the fingers digging into his own shoulder, and Portgas pulls his mouth free of Smoker’s, his sense of self-preservation kicking in. “Wha—?”

With the ease of years of practice, Smoker pins Portgas’ wrist to the fence and cuffs him to it.

“What the _hell_ \--”

Smoker steps regretfully out of Portgas’ furious reach and pulls out a new cigarette. He lights up and takes a deep drag. Watches Portgas rattle the cuffs’ chain without effect. Listens to him swear a blue streak. When the stream of profanity has slowed to a trickle, Smoker takes the cuffs’ key from his pocket and holds it up.

Moonlight glints off the key. Portgas glares first at it, then at Smoker.

“I’m going to put this down here,” Smoker says, pointing his cigarette at a spot on the pavement just beyond where the reach of Portgas’ foot should be. “You’ll get to it. Eventually.”

He drops the key. “You bastard,” Portgas says quietly.

“Only on Fridays,” Smoker says, and walks away.

He only gets a few feet away before Portgas is calling after him. “Hey, Captain."

Smoker doesn’t stop. “What?” he says, not turning.

“Just thought you should know—I always get what I want.”

Smoker smiles grimly at the arrogant confidence in Portgas’ voice. “So do I, kid,” he says under his breath. “Even when I don't want to.”


End file.
